Down The Zambezi filmed in South Africa this summer

Tom Basden is piloting a BBC mockumentary set in Africa, Chortle can reveal.

The Plebs creator writes, stars in and executive produces Down The Zambezi, which filmed in South Africa this summer, and plays the role of Beresford Sophie.

The pilot is directed by Jamie Jay Johnson, who previously worked with Basden on Fresh Meat and the 2014 BBC pilot of Party, the comic's adaptation of his play and subsequent Radio 4 programme about a group of naïve idealists setting up a political party.

Further cast details of Down The Zambezi have yet to emerge.

The comedy is a co-production between BBC Studios and Blue Ice Africa, part of South African-Canadian production company Blue Ice Pictures, which made the Russell Peters vehicle The Indian Detective and is currently rebooting the Banana Splits as a horror movie.

The producers are Adam Friedlander and Philomena Cunk's Sam Ward, who piloted the similarly named African mercenary comedy Zimbani for Dave in 2010, with Julian Barrett in the title role.

The well-travelled Basden, who wrote E4's Asia backpacking comedy Gap Year in 2017, has previously spoken of his desire to potentially set an unrealised second series of the show in Africa, telling the Radio Times 'I feel like there’s still a lot of the world to hone in on, so we’re not short of options.’

Speaking of his desire to set comedies in exotic locations, Basden has reflected that 'you can never really go on holiday from yourself. So even though they are set in this incredible backdrop, the focus is on them and what’s going on inside … when people go away together and you take a relationship on the road, or a friendship or romance, the things that made the relationship work or fail you take with you, nothing gets solved by getting out of the place that you are from.

'That stuff is really fascinating, particularly when you’ve got people standing by the Great Wall of China or the Petronas Towers in Malaysia and they are still talking about the stuff that they’d be talking about in the pub in Kingston six months ago and arguing about the same kind of stuff, I think that’s the truth about the way people travel… unfortunately.’

The Zambezi flows through Zambia, Angola, Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe and Mozambique. It was central to David Livingston's 19th-century mission in which he became the first European to cross the width of southern Africa. 

It has featured in comedy shows before. Dara O Briain and Jack Dee were among a group of six celebrities who rafted 110km down the river for Comic Relief in 2013. And Sandi Toksvig, who partially grew up in Africa, made a 1994 BBC Two documentary, The Zambezi, in which she canoed down the river in a boat said to be owned by Livingstone himself.

Former Cambridge Footlighter Basden has just completed filming the second series of Ricky Gervais's Netflix comedy After Life, is working on the US adaptation of Plebs with Seth Rogen, and is also writing his first movie.

Co-written with Scottish writer-director Siri Rodnes, Nine Lives is a sci-fi story about two jaded humans assigned a hive mind of 10 identical clones as colleagues. It is based on Ursula K. Le Guin’s sci-fi novella of the same name, with Johnny Lee Miller and rapper Common attached to star.

- by Jay Richardson

Published: 30 Oct 2019